Speaking at the Fiscal Summit, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the George Washington Bridge lane closures would be “a footnote” if he runs for president.

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It was so peaceful.

Setting: The internet. Everything is fine.

Via tmz.com

Enter: You on Facebook, or Twitter, or any social media platform of your choice.

Via tmz.com

You say: "You know, I don't really agree with this recent political thing."

Suddenly, someone with the opposite political view is like: "OH YEA? TELL ME WHY!!!"

Via tmz.com

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“[M]otion for emergency stay denied.”

Jennifer Rambo, right, of Fort Smith, Ark., kisses her partner Kristin Seaton, left, of Jacksonville, Ark., following their marriage ceremony in front of the Carroll County Courthouse on Saturday, May 10, 2014, in Eureka Springs, Ark.

AP Photo/Sarah Bentham

WASHINGTON — The Arkansas Supreme Court dismissed the state's appeal of the pending case over the state's same-sex marriage ban and denied a request for a stay of the trial court order.

Because "the [trial] court's order is not final," the state Supreme Court opinion stated, "we have no jurisdiction to hear the appeal."

Secondly, the state Supreme Court addressed the state's request to issue a stay of the trial court opinion pending the appeal even if the appeal was decided by the court to be premature.

"[T]he circuit court did not issue a ruling with regard to Ark. Code Ann. Sec. 9-11-208(b) (Repl. 2009), 'License not issued to persons of the same sex.' Therefore, the circuit court's order has no effect on Ark. Code Ann. S 9-11-208(b) and its prohibition against circuit and county clerks issuing same-sex marriage licenses," the state Supreme Court opinion stated. "Accordingly, we deny the State's petition for an emergency stay of the circuit court's May 9, 2014 order."

Read the opinion:

A unprecedented new campaign by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America teaches VA employees and veterans how to become the next Edward Snowden.

U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary, retired general Eric Shinseki, in 2012.

Tim Shaffer / Reuters / Reuters

WASHINGTON — After the deaths of at least 40 veterans on a health care waiting list, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America will announce Thursday an online whistleblower project meant to expose widespread problems plaguing the Veterans Administration health care system.

The online kit will instruct veterans on best practices for reporting abuses and potentially leaking documents. The tools are critical now, organizers say, when veterans face a health care system they say is in crisis and an Obama administration that has had a "chilling effect" on whistleblowing. The White House says it values and protects whistleblowers.

Asking VA employees to go outside the system and straight to the public with problems is in keeping with the military traditions veterans are taught to uphold, said IAVA Chief of Staff Derek Bennett, a former Army Captain and Special Assistant to General David Petraeus.

"As a veteran myself, I recognize the importance of the chain of command," he said. "But as a former company commander, I know that my soldiers always had the opportunity to circumvent the chain of command if my work or my staff were part of the problem."

The ongoing VA hospital scandal, which has seen top officials subpoenaed by Congress amid allegations that VA hospitals have covered up long wait times, has infuriated veterans' groups, including the IAVA, which deals specifically with veterans of post-9/11 conflicts.

After delays at the Phoenix VA hospital went on so long that some veterans allegedly died while waiting for care, complaints about the overloaded VA hospital system have emerged all over the country. Veterans and congressional investigators have complained that it has been tough to get straight answers from inside the VA and its embattled leadership.

To combat the problem, the IAVA is joining with the Project On Government Oversight to launch VAOversight.org, a site specifically designed to help VA employees leak to POGO investigators and the media. POGO, which has long helped whistleblowers and other leakers get their information out, says the collaboration is the first of its kind in the group's history.

The website and the whistleblower campaign will be announced at a Thursday press conference featuring IAVA leaders, POGO officials, and veterans. BuzzFeed was given an early look at the site and how the program works.

It recommends would-be leakers install the encrypted Tor software, mimicking Edward Snowden.

Even with the help provided by POGO, Newman said leaking remains a dangerous business, especially in the Obama era.

"Certainly the fear of reprisal is real," he said. "We don't have any personal knowledge of reprisals in the VA at the moment… but in general it's the norm not the exception."

The site offers detailed training in how to circumvent the stringent anti-leak efforts put in place across the government by the Obama administration, which has made cracking down on unauthorized leaks a priority.

"What we've seen with the Obama administration is the lengths they will go to try to keep things in house," said Joe Newman, communications director at POGO.

Newman, a former journalist, said the Obama administration has for the most part carried over intense anti-leak programs launched in the George W. Bush administration. Changing technology and a changing emphasis on national security have focused attention on whistleblowers and investigating leaks, he said.

Still, Newman added, the Obama administration's zeal to track down and punish leakers is well-documented.

"The thing that makes the Obama administration really stand out is the use of the Espionage Act. They've invoked it seven times [against leakers] and that's more than every other administration combined when it comes to going after people who have leaked to the media," he said. "That really puts the Obama administration in a different category as far the extent they'll go to keep things secret."

Bennett said Obama's prosecutions have had the desired effect when it comes to leaks.

"If you just look at the number of whistleblower prosecutions, this administration is significantly higher than the previous administration," he said. "I can imagine that post-Snowden, there is even more concern about that. So, yeah, I can imagine there's a chilling effect."

But the VA is not an intelligence agency, where even speaking to the media on any topic without authorization is strictly, forbidden. And successful whistleblowing has played a major role in the unfolding VA scandal. On Monday, employees at the Durham, North Carolina VA hospital were put on leave after a fellow employee alleged they falsified records to hide wait times.

While there are built-in reporting systems for problems, IAVA says internal systems aren't working fast enough to fix the VA and more employees need to be encouraged to come forward. Bennett said veterans can't wait for the problems inside the VA to be fixed.

"Our members are outraged and flabbergasted about the allegations that are coming out," he said. "As somebody's who's not in the system, I don't know their exact process [at the VA.] But clearly there is something about the culture or the structure that these employees...do not feel comfortable sharing internally."

The White House says it appreciates and welcomes whistleblowing.

"The Obama administration has demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting whistleblowers," an administration official said. "The president appointed strong advocates to the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board who have been widely praised. The President also signed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012, which improves whistleblower protections for Federal employees."

Beyond the high-tech tools, Newman added, sometimes the simplest advice is the best when it comes to avoiding being caught as a leaker.

"FOR YOUR PROTECTION, DO NOT USE A GOVERNMENT OR CONTRACTOR PHONE, FAX, OR COMPUTER TO CONTACT POGO," the IAVA-POGO site reads.

A delay is needed to stop “unseemly chaos, confusion, conflict, uncertainty,” lawyers for Idaho Gov. Butch Otter argue to the court. A countdown to Friday. [ Update: Plaintiff couples file opposition to the governor’s request. ]

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (right) attends the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference with his wife, Lori Otter, on July 6, 2011, in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop same-sex couples from being able to marry in his state starting Friday.

A day after declaring the state's constitutional amendment barring such marriages unconstitutional, U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Wagahoff Dale denied Otter's request that the ruling — which takes effect at 9 a.m. Friday morning — be put on hold pending the state's appeal of the ruling.

Later Wednesday, Otter filed a notice that he would appeal the ruling and the denial of a stay to the 9th Circuit. He filed the "emergency" motion for a stay Wednesday evening.

"Absent the stay requested by Governor Otter's emergency motion, there will be a repetition in Idaho of the unseemly chaos, confusion, conflict, uncertainty, and spawn of further litigation and administrative actions seen in Utah and, to a lesser extent, in Michigan," lawyers for Otter wrote.

[Update on Thursday: Temporary stay granted by 9th Circuit, no Friday marriages for same-sex couples in Idaho.]

Specifically, Otter pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to issue a stay during the appeal of the case challenging Utah's marriage ban as a reason to grant the stay.

In issuing the stay in the Utah case, the lawyers for Otter wrote that "the United States Supreme Court made clear that it will decide the constitutionality of man-woman marriage and until that time no lower court decision holding against man-woman marriage should operate to allow same-sex couples to marry or have their marriages recognized contrary to the law of their particular States."

The brief is signed by Otter's new outside counsel as of Wednesday, Monte Stewart. Stewart is one of the outside lawyers helping Utah in its defense of its marriage ban, as well.

In addition to arguing that Otter is likely to succeed in his appeal defending the state's 2006 ban, the lawyers write, "Every marriage performed under that cloud of uncertainty and before final resolution by the United States Supreme Court would be an affront to the sovereignty of Idaho and to the democratically expressed will of the people of Idaho."

Notably, Otter's lawyers argue that Otter is likely to succeed in his appeal regardless of the level of scrutiny given to the ban by the court. Under a recent ruling in another case in the 9th Circuit, laws that classify people based on their sexual orientation are subjected to heightened scrutiny, which requires the state to show a more substantial justification for a law in order for it to be found to be constitutional.

"Idaho's marriage laws satisfy ... any other level of judicial scrutiny exactly because the vital man-woman marriage institution, unless suppressed by judicial decisions such as the Injunction and replaced with a genderless marriage regime, will continue to provide compellingly valuable social benefits, as demonstrated above," Otter's lawyers write.

If the 9th Circuit will not grant a stay pending appeal, Otter asks that a stay be issued "for a reasonable period to allow the governor to seek in a fair and orderly way a stay from the Circuit Justice and/or full Supreme Court."

Read Gov. Otter's motion:

Update: Read the plaintiffs' opposition:

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“I think 9/11 is a long time ago, and it’s something that needs to be looked at again.”

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) answers questions from reporters after the weekly Republican caucus luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, March 11.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday backed bipartisan efforts to reexamine the controversial law passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that opened the door to the ever-expanding "war on terror."

Although Reid did not take a specific stand on how the law should be changed, in an interview with BuzzFeed he argued the time has come to revisit the Authorization of Use of Military Force.

"It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but 9/11 was a very difficult time in the history of this country," said Reid, who voted for the law in 2001.

"[But] I definitely think its something we should definitely take a look at. I think 9/11 is a long time ago, and it's something that needs to be looked at again. I have no problem with that," Reid added.

The AUMF gave military and intelligence agencies wide leeway to pursue individuals and organizations with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. The law provided the legal groundwork for the administration's aggressive counterterrorism strategy, from armed drone strikes to "kill/capture" missions, raids similar to the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Although anti-war elements in Congress have long complained about the broad scope of the scant 60-word law, over the last several years members on both sides of the aisle increasingly have raised concerns with the law, worried that it can be used for attacks across the globe against people or groups that were never intended by Congress.

"We are still operating in a war declared on Sept. 14, 2001," Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said Wednesday during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And both the Bush and Obama administrations have determined that that war can be carried out against members of al-Qaeda, against anyone who associates with affiliates or associates of al-Qaeda, no matter when those associates pop up … so long as the al-Qaeda or affiliated organizations have violent intentions against the U.S. or coalition partners. That's sort of a vague phrase."

"I don't think Congress thought passing that AUMF Sept. 14, 2001, that 13 years later we'd be still engaged in war," Kaine added.

Kaine is working with Sen. John McCain to reform the broader War Powers Act to drastically narrow the ability of the White House to essentially declare war on groups or individuals. The bill would include tighter definitions of against whom a president could declare war, requiring greater formal consultation with Congress, and setting strict rules for when a president can take action without congressional authorization.

"If we can't learn from the last 13 years and make some changes, then I say woe on us," Kaine said.

Although Reid's support for reexamining the law could give a boost for efforts to reform the AUMF, it still faces an uncertain future. Groups of lawmakers have been meeting for months on various proposals, and there is still significant disagreement on how to proceed.

Indeed, Kaine himself hinted that a final reform may not come this year, noting, "This is a long term effort … we're kind of building up momentum."

Not to be confused with Correct the Record, David Brock’s group.

Lanny Davis, the Clinton loyalist pictured above in 2012, will organize a group of volunteers to distribute fact sheets outside the Benghazi committee hearing room.

Leigh Vogel / Getty Images

The year was 1997. Inside the hearing room of the Senate Hart Office Building, Republicans led an investigation into Bill Clinton's campaign fundraising practices. Outside, Lanny Davis paced the hallway. He handed out "fact sheets" and commanded packs of reporters; he dismissed each hearing as "nothing new" and made himself generally available for what he called "clarifications." The White House special counsel was a one-man "rapid response" team.

Seventeen years later, Davis is returning to Capitol Hill with the same strategy.

The longtime supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton said he will set up shop outside the House Select Committee on Benghazi. He first announced his plans for the project, which he calls the Truth Squad, Tuesday night on Fox News, where he works as a paid contributor. Davis told anchor Megyn Kelly that he would be "relying on" another organization called Correct the Record, but he clarified in a phone interview on Wednesday that the groups will remain unaffiliated.

The Benghazi panel, established last week, will investigate the terrorist strike that hit the U.S. mission there in the fall of 2012. Republicans say the administration misled the public about the causes for the attack, which killed four Americans.

Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state when the compound came under attack, has become the face, and target, of the Republican messaging around the controversy — an effort that has largely played out online, with the latest round of documents being produced by conservative website Judicial Watch.

Davis will take his Truth Squad operation offline, setting up a table outside committee hearings, where volunteers will give reporters and lawmakers fact sheets, or booklets of facts — depending on what he decides to have printed.

The idea for the Truth Squad popped into Davis' head last spring, he said, when the White House released more than 100 pages of emails pertaining to Benghazi. After Republicans voted to create the select committee last week, Davis solidified his plans — though he admits he's still figuring out the details.

"I'm kind of making this up as I go along," Davis said. "Seriously."

"I decided this pretty much based on my experience in the Clinton White House. My first thought was just to repeat what I did in 1997," he said. "I didn't think it was going to go anywhere. But it took off like a rocket ship."

The Truth Squad materials will be nonpartisan, and will not contain "attacks, criticisms, or adjectives," Davis promised. "Charge me $10 for every adjective." The former White House counsel plans to appear outside as many hearings as he can, but he is also looking for volunteers to take shifts. "We're also going to be putting people on the air," he added. "Whatever it takes."

Davis, who now runs a law firm out of Washington, said after he talked about the idea on Fox News, he received calls from people who wanted to volunteer. At one point, he said, one suggested he house the project on a website. "All of a sudden people are making all sorts of suggestions," he said on Wednesday afternoon. "We're hoping to get BenghaziTruthSquad.com." But by Wednesday evening, Davis said he had decided against an online presence, citing costs.

"I priced it out, and that's where I stood by day's end."

Davis said he may rely on materials printed by Correct the Record, a research operation aimed at defending Hillary Clinton from partisan attacks. The group is operated by the giant political action committee American Bridge, founded by David Brock. But both Davis and a spokesperson for Correct the Record, which has been pumping out research to reporters about the Benghazi attack for months, were clear that the two projects are not working together in an official capacity.

Adrienne Elrod, spokesperson for Correct the Record, said in a statement, "Lanny Davis is a great supporter of Secretary Clinton's. Correct the Record and Davis are not affiliated in any way, but we are all working, in our own ways, to make sure the facts are before the American people."

During Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House in 2008, Davis often appeared on cable news as a pundit to defend her campaign. Then and now, Davis acts on his own behalf — no consultation necessary with either Clinton.

"This is what is wonderful about my situation. I don't ask permission," he said. "I'm a longtime friend of Hillary. Her name was Rodham when I first met her. I do what I think I should do, and I don't affiliate with any campaign or any organization."

The kings of the unnamed source are going to work at a company that prides itself on resisting unattributed “hearsay.” What could go wrong?

Associate Press

Bloomberg News may finally be admitting defeat in its war on anonymous sourcing.

The news organization, which has long taken pride in its refusal to regularly grant anonymity to sources, announced earlier this month that it was tapping Time's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann to helm a new politics website. The men are best known for their pair of bestselling campaign books, Game Change and Double Down, which are filled with buzzy political news based entirely on unattributed interviews with unnamed sources.

The books have made Halperin and Heilemann two of the most high-profile political scribes in the country — and reportedly helped fetch them each million-dollar salaries at Bloomberg — but their reporting methods seem squarely at odds with their new employer's high-minded rules.

In The Bloomberg Way, the company's reporting guide, journalists are strongly discouraged from relying on unnamed sources, and forbidden from publishing direct quotes without on-the-record attribution.

"It's a rare occasion when an anonymously sourced story rises to the quality of our best work," it reads. The reporting guide also states that exceptions to the rule must be approved by the editor-in-chief as well as two executive editors, or managing editors — and all of them must be informed of the sources' identities.

The policy has been the source of some newsroom controversy over the years. In late 2009, after the company bought BusinessWeek, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler issued a chiding memo taking the magazine to task for failing to live up to the news organization's standards.

"We shun anonymous quotations and assertions that are negative because readers have no proof that they are more credible than hearsay. In an age when news increasingly is asserted, we must be fact-driven," Winkler wrote at the time. The memo was promptly leaked to Gawker.

But in politics, perhaps more than most beats, anonymous sourcing has been accepted by reporters and sources as the cost of doing business, and some of the most revealing political stories every day (including those on BuzzFeed) include quotes from unnamed officials.

A spokesman for Bloomberg declined to comment for this story, but there are signs that the company has been easing up on its policy lately. A quick search of the website reveals at least four stories that cite sources "who asked not to be identified."

“Our journalism advantage is shrinking,” a committee led by the publisher’s son warned. A call to get rid of the metaphor of “Church and State.”

Associated Press

A 96-page internal New York Times report, sent to top executives last month by a committee led by the publisher's son and obtained by BuzzFeed, paints a dark picture of a newsroom struggling more dramatically than is immediately visible to adjust to the digital world, a newsroom that is hampered primarily by its own storied culture.

The Times report was finalized March 24 by a committee of digitally oriented staffers led by reporter A.G. Sulzberger. His father, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, fired Executive Editor Jill Abramson Tuesday, a decision that doesn't appear immediately related to the paper's digital weaknesses.

The report largely ignores legacy competitors and focuses on the new wave of digital companies, including First Look Media, Vox, Huffington Post, Business Insider, and BuzzFeed.

"They are ahead of us in building impressive support systems for digital journalists, and that gap will grow unless we quickly improve our capabilities," the report warns. "Meanwhile, our journalism advantage is shrinking as more of these upstarts expand their newsrooms."

"We are not moving with enough urgency," it says.

A New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha says that this copy of the report is a draft and "not the final version" of the report presented to newsroom management.

The deep problems, the report says, are cultural, including a sense that the Times will simply serve as a destination — leading to a neglect of social promotion. One factor is an obsessive focus on the front page of the print paper, with reporters evaluated in their annual reviews on how many times they've made A1.

"The newsroom is unanimous: we are focusing too much time and energy on Page One," the report says.

Another problem: Most content is published online around evening print deadlines.

Also a central issue is "a cadre of editors who remain unfamiliar with the web."

"Many desks lack editors who even know how to evaluate digital work," the report says. (The copy obtained by BuzzFeed, which is missing five pages, can be read in full below this story.)

The report also details technical weaknesses in the paper's backend: The lack of an organized system of tags to organize stories' metadata, and the fact that it took "manual labor" for reporter Libby Rosenthal to obtain the email addresses of readers interested in a series she'd written.

And it says the paper is unwilling to kill new digital features, like its international home page and "Scoop" app, that simply aren't working.

The first person quoted in the report, ironically, is Janine Gibson, the Guardian editor who Abramson reportedly approached about a top newsroom job, angering Sulzberger and the deputy who he would make her successor, Dean Baquet.

The report also calls for a profound rethinking of the newsroom's independence from the rest of the company, in order to involve editorial leaders more deeply in technological decisions.

"The very first step … should be a deliberate push to abandon our current metaphors of choice — 'The Wall' and 'Church and State' — which project an enduring need for division. Increased collaboration, done right, does not present any threat to our values of journalistic independence," the report says.

The NYT Now app and new Cooking subsite are described as successful collaborations.

"It's the old world where the publisher and the editor work together," senior editor Sam Sifton, who worked on the cooking project, told the report's authors. "It's not lions lying down with lambs. It's a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship."

Upshot Editor David Leonhardt, by contrast, said that his section launch was hampered by its isolation from technology.

"I had no idea who to reach out to and it never would have occurred to me to do it," Leonhardt is quoted as saying.

Another issue: The paper's Twitter account is run by the newsroom. Its Facebook account is run by the paper's business side.

More broadly, the newsroom has "abdicated completely the role of strategy," a masthead editor is quoted, speaking of their digital strategy.

The report has some specific suggestions around, for instance, more extensive promotion plans for big stories; one experiment described as a success led to Ashton Kutcher tweeting a Nicholas Kristof column on sex trafficking.

It also suggests a TED talks–style event series and an expanded op-ed platform, as well as location-based local news and information.

But its overwhelming tone is one of alarm.

"While we receive accolades for our digital efforts like 'Snowfall,' we nevertheless are at risk of becoming known as a place that does not fully understand, reward, and celebrate digital skills," the report warns.

As a result, the report says, the paper has been losing talented staffers and been unable to recruit others. Upworthy's former head of promotion, Michael Wertheim, turned down a job at Times, the report says.

"For anyone in that role to succeed, the newsroom had to be fully committed to working with the business side," Wertheim told the report's authors.

It also includes an unusually frank exchange with a competitor, an executive at Huffington Post who is described as contrasting that site's facility with search engine optimization with the Times' failures in that area.

"An executive there described watching the aggregation outperform our original content after Nelson Mandela's death," the report says. "'You guys got crushed,' he said. 'I was queasy watching the numbers. I'm not proud of this. But this is your competition. You should defend the digital pickpockets from stealing your stuff with better headlines, better social.'"

The task force's existence first became public in a memo to sent to staff last July, where Abramson first mentioned the digital task force that she said would "function as the newsroom's version of a skunk-works team, a creative team that will think up and propose new ways to expand our news offerings digitally."

The committee was comprised of other Times journalists and took six months to complete its findings; Abramson and Baquet outlined its findings — but not its dire tone — in a memo released last week to Times staffers. The memo contained the names of the members of the committee: Adam Bryant, Charles Duhigg, Adam Ellick, Elena Gianni, Amy O'Leary, Andrew Phelps, Louise Story and A.G. Sulzberger, Ben Peskoe and Jonathan Galinsky.

A spokeswoman for the Times, Eileen Murphy, emailed the following statement:

The full report was an internal document, meant for newsroom management as a candid assessment of where the The Times newsroom was in its digital transformation. The key findings were distilled into a shorter report and released publicly last week. That report reflected the findings and recommendations of the task force accurately, and as we have said publicly, we have embraced it and promised to act on many of its recommendations.

As Arthur said in his remarks to the newsroom yesterday, there was no disagreement between him, Jill or Dean on the findings of this task force and their conclusions played no role in Jill's departure from The Times.

The New York Times Innovation Report

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Asked at a Wednesday even hosted by the Women’s Foreign Policy Group if more Benghazi information was coming, National Security Advisor Susan Rice responded “dang if I know.” Rice cited what she said was the administration’s release of “25,000 pages of documents, or 25,000 individual documents.”

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Homeschoolers jailed, motorcycle love affairs, political correctness.

Here are nine highlights.

When Harley Brown assured people that he is not crazy.

vine.co

When Walt Bayes said he went to jail for homeschooling his children.

vine.co

When Brown compared bikers to Playboy bunnies.

vine.co

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This is exactly how Fox News’ Outnumbered is supposed to work.

Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson got into a heated debate with the hosts of Outnumbered about how equal pay played into the New York Times' decision to fire executive editor Jill Abramson, which Carlson called, "greatest story ever."

Carlson stepped into it almost immediately with Outnumbered's female hosts when he said, "I'm employer of a lot of people. If you adjust for amount of uninterrupted time spent in the work place, women make more than men in almost every category."

"Go try and hire a male journalist. You can't find any!" he added.

After feeling the heat from his colleagues, Carlson protested that he was "pro-women."

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Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio again denied the scientific consensus human activity is a cause of climate change during an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio program Wednesday. According to NASA, 97% of scientists agree on climate change being due to human activity.

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Waaayyyy back.

Newt having a sassy phone conversation

instagram.com

Hippie Nancy

instagram.com

"Groovy"

Chuck Schumer, the Boy Scout

instagram.com

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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issues a temporary order stopping same-sex couples’ marriages, which were due to start at 9 a.m. Friday.

WASHINGTON — Same-sex couples will not be able to marry on Friday in Idaho following a temporary order from a federal appeals court Thursday.

The order follows the request from Idaho Gov. Butch Otter to stay the enforcement of this week's trial court decision finding Idaho's ban on same-sex couples' marriages to be unconstitutional. Otter is appealing that decision, which was scheduled to take effect at 9 a.m. Friday, and asked for a stay pending the appeal.

In a one-sentence order, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "The district court's May 13, 2014 order is temporarily stayed pending this court's disposition of appellants' emergency motions for a stay pending appeal."

The appeals court judges — Judges Edward Leavy, Consuelo Callahan, and Andrew Hurwitz — issued a temporary stay until the 9th Circuit decides whether to issue a stay that will last throughout the state's appeal.

The judge also denied the state’s request for a stay of his order. The state is appealing the decisions to the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Jennifer Rambo, right, of Fort Smith, Ark., kisses her partner Kristin Seaton, left, of Jacksonville, Ark., following their marriage ceremony in front of the Carroll County Courthouse on Saturday, May 10, 2014, in Eureka Springs, Ark.

AP Photo/Sarah Bentham

WASHINGTON — A circuit judge in Arkansas has clarified his prior order striking down the state's ban on same-sex couples' marriages to ensure that clerks are not barred from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The order is entered "nunc pro tunc," as requested by the plaintiff same-sex couples challenging the ban in order to protect the rights of those same-sex couples married in the state since Circuit Court Judge Christopher Piazza issued his initial ruling on May 9.

"This final order is entered to reflect the original intent of the Court's May 9, 20l4 Order and to clarify and protect the rights and interests of all who reasonably relied upon and/or acted in accordance with the letter, sprit and/or intent of this Court's May 9,2014 Order and to further serve the interest of justice in this matter," Piazza wrote Thursday.

Piazza also denied the state's request for a stay of his order, writing, "There is no evidence that Defendants, the State or its citizens were harmed by the entry of the Court's original order or that they will be harmed by the clarifications contained" in Thursday's order.

Additionally, Piazza issued a final order in the case Thursday, allowing the state to appeal his decision — a procedural quirk that had led the state's Supreme Court to dismiss the state's initial appeal on Wednesday evening.

The state already has filed its notice of appeal with Piazza's court, stating, "The State hereby appeals to the Arkansas Supreme Court ...."

Read the final, clarified order:

Read the stay denial:

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“That is why we need that legislation.”

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked recently fired New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson in an attack on Republicans on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Reid argued the gender-pay-gap legislation that Republicans shot down earlier this year would have prevented Abramson's firing.

Look at what happened, it appears, in the New York Times. The woman that ran that newspaper was fired yesterday. Why? It is now in the press because she complained she was doing the same work as men and two different jobs and made a lot less money than they did. That is why we need that legislation.

The Times denied Thursday that Abramson's compensation was less than her predecessor's.

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Ba da ba ba ba…

In the United States, workers demanded $15 a hour for their labor, as well as the right to unionize. Several major fast food chains were targeted, including McDonald's, Wendy's, KFC, and Burger King. Activists claim there were protests in 150 cities in the United States, as well as 80 cities internationally.

But in some cases, things got weird.

YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP / Getty Images

In Seoul, South Korea, protesters wore these creepy Ronald McDonald masks.

AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon / Via images-cdn3.newscred.com

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The nomination of Michael Boggs, selected by the president as a compromise with Republicans, hits the skids.

Sens. Charles Schumer, Harry Reid, Patty Murray, and Dick Durbin have all said they're concerned about voting for Michael Boggs' confirmation.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Progressives are poised to derail the nomination of Georgia state judge Michael Boggs, as top Senate Democrats Thursday expressed serious concerns about voting for his confirmation.

Publicly, progressives are not ready to say their plan to scuttle Boggs' nomination to the federal bench has succeeded. They note that Boggs may make it past the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that it's hard to predict what might happen on the Senate floor. But with new progressive groups directing Democrats to vote against Boggs every day and top Democrats in the Senate signaling they'll vote against him, there's a growing confidence behind the scenes that Boggs is not going to be confirmed.

Boggs, who has been a state judge for a decade, has come under intense scrutiny over his past as a Democratic state lawmaker, which was marked with fervent opposition to same-sex marriage and support for abortion restrictions and the Confederate flag.

After a contentious confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday where the progressive groups say Boggs was unable to answer for his legislative past, the entire Democratic leadership of the Senate expressed concern over Boggs. Two Democratic senators in leadership, Harry Reid of Nevada and Patty Murray of Washington, flat out said they plan to vote against Boggs if his nomination reaches the Senate floor.

Judiciary Democrats remain tight-lipped about their plans when it comes to Boggs, who is scheduled to come up for a committee vote when the panel meets next week. None of the committee Democrats would respond directly to questions about their vote Thursday. Minnesota Democrat Al Franken, who was among the tough questioners of Boggs when he appeared before the committee, said through a statement from his office that he hasn't made a decision about how to vote yet.

"Sen. Franken vigorously questioned Boggs and he is still weighing the nomination," an aide said.

Boggs' nomination came out of a deal the White House cut with Georgia's Republican senators to get nominees past the "blue slip" process, which effectively allows a senator to veto nominees for federal courts in his or her home state. The deal apparently didn't require the judges get confirmed, according to one of the senators who made the pact.

"Our deal was that the committee would hear all seven of them and the committee would vote whichever way they vote," Sen. Johnny Isakson, Republican from Georgia, told the Huffington Post's Jennifer Bendery Thursday. "Beyond that, there was no deal."

The other Georgia Republican senator, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, declined to comment on the nomination Thursday, though he said Wednesday in an interview with Politico that he had no indication that Boggs' nomination would be scuttled.

The White House has not been vocal since the confirmation hearing in defending Boggs'.

That's a marked shift, however, from before the hearing when the administration defended the nomination strongly. The White House did not respond to questions about what efforts, if any, are underway to defend Boggs in the face of mounting Democratic concern.

At the press briefing Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney did not press very hard for senators to cast their votes in favor of Boggs.

"The president of course believes that each senator should vote as he or she sees fit," he said. He believes that all of the nominees he sends up are qualified, and that includes Judge Boggs."

One Senate Republican aide familiar with judicial nominations observing the Boggs process said it appears the White House has abandoned Boggs in the face of the progressive opposition.

"Running away from things when their base gets riled up is something this White House does well," the Republican said Wednesday after Carney's remarks. "The president backpaddles from someone he nominated the same day that Harry Reid says he won't support him? C'mon."

Outside observers say the Boggs' isolation is part and parcel of the process that led to his nomination in the first place. The use of the blue slip process has skyrocketed in recent years, University Of Richmond law school professor Carl Tobias, an expert in the judicial nomination process, said. Presidents pick nominees they don't necessarily like in the interests of compromise, and that means those nominees may end up going it alone.

"This blue-slip policy creates problems. There may be some questions people ought to ask about whether the blue slip policy works," he said. "If you look at all the present vaccines without nominees, they're almost all from states that have Republican Senators. When you have deals like this, with a number of people filling vacancies, it can be very difficult and it become unraveled."

But with the blue-slip process in still in place, more isolated nominees like Boggs may be the only way to break the judicial logjam.

"I'm tempted to say that horse-trading on judgeships is just not a good policy. I'm not even sure that's what's going on here, but people have been very critical of that sort of notion," said Tobias. "Still the federal courts are hurt when the vacancies aren't filled. And those Georgia vacancies have been ongoing for a long time. So I think it's a good idea from that perspective to have those seats filled."

"Either you would trade a judgeship for legislation or multiple judgeships…sometimes that can work."

White House advisor Valerie Jarrett said the administration had received assurances from Speaker John Boehner. UPDATE: Jarrett tweets Boehner had made a “commitment to trying.”

White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett

Larry Downing / Reuters

WASHINGTON — An aide to House Speaker John Boehner rejected Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett's comments that the administration has a "commitment" from Boehner to pass immigration reform.

"Republicans are committed to reforming our immigration system," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in an email to BuzzFeed. "But as the speaker has said repeatedly, it's difficult to see how we make progress until the American people have faith that President Obama will enforce the law as written."

Jarrett told donors and investors at a Las Vegas conference Thursday that Boehner was "frustrated with his caucus" and predicted the speaker would allow either a number of small bills or the Senate-passed immigration reform bill to go through the House after most Republicans had made it through their primaries.

"I think we have a window this summer, between now and August, to get something done," Jarrett said, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. "We have a commitment from Speaker Boehner, who's very frustrated with his caucus."

Boehner's spokesman said no such commitment had been made.

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